"What's the matter, buddy? You suddenly look like your brain shut off."
"Huh—?"
Being addressed by a middle-aged man with a rough-hewn face, Subaru couldn't help but let a dumbfounded expression slip out in response.
At his blank reply, the man furrowed his already heavily creased brow even further.
"I'm asking you—are you buying the linga or not?"
"Huh—?"
"The linga! You said you wanted to eat one, didn't you? You're the one who came up and started talking to me, and then you just space out like that. Gave me a scare. ...So what's it gonna be?"
The muscular, scar-faced man held a small, cute red fruit in the palm of his hand.
Subaru looked back and forth between the fruit—which bore a striking resemblance to an apple—and the man's face.
"Ah, actually, I'm... unforgivably, spectacularly broke."
"...So what, you're just window-shopping? Then beat it! I got a business to run here. Can't stand around humoring tourists."
The man shooed him aside with a careless wave of his hand, and Subaru obediently moved along.
He—
"Huh? Huh? —What does that mean?"
That was all he could manage: a question aimed at no one in particular, born of confusion and bewilderment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The main street was just as packed with people as before, and aside from the occasional lizard-drawn carriage passing through, pedestrians spilled across the full width of the road at all times.
It was still high sun. The temperature wasn't exactly sweltering, but when a human-shaped wolf—should he call it a werewolf?—passed in front of him, the sight of its fur coat brought a vague, half-formed thought to mind: "It must be awful in this heat."
A fleeting thought, sure, but— "No time for sightseeing musings like that. Focus! What is even happening?!"
He clutched his head and twisted his hips, striking an elaborate pose of existential suffering right there in the middle of the street. The curious spectacle drew stares from every direction.
He was all too familiar with that kind of attention. Just a few hours ago, the exact same type of look had been thrust at him from all sides, over and over, without an ounce of tact—no, it was literally identical.
"Right, a few hours ago... supposedly."
As he spoke, Subaru swept his gaze across his surroundings and tilted his head at the unforgiving sky above.
The sun was high. By all rights—in Subaru's understanding, at least—it should have been sunset just moments ago.
This sensation wasn't entirely new to him either.
When he'd been dragged into this otherworld—to this world—he had already experienced the disorienting reversal of night and day. So the shock wasn't as acute as the first time. But there was one clearly different condition.
"My stomach wound... is gone."
He lifted the hem of his tracksuit and checked his abdomen, muttering as he did.
There was no trace of the gash that some large bladed weapon had torn open, spilling his blood and viscera for all to see. Naturally, there were no stitches, no stains of blood on his clothes. Not a single sign.
If anything, even the usual dust and mud stains that plagued his well-worn tracksuit were nowhere to be found.
The convenience store bag in his hand was intact, and his phone and wallet were still nestled in his pants pockets. In every conceivable way, he was back to full starting condition.
It was enough to make him wonder if he was losing his mind.
"Being summoned to another world already blew past my mental capacity—so what the hell am I supposed to do with this situation...?"
The fact that the wound had healed wasn't entirely without precedent;
But the wound Subaru had taken in that loot warehouse just a short while ago was unmistakably fatal. He had felt death itself the instant consciousness slipped away—a wound that should have killed him beyond any doubt.
If a wound that grievous could be mended, then the magic of this world must be capable of resurrecting the dead.
"The value of life takes a pretty steep hit when you put it that way... No, more importantly—who did this?"
Aware that his memories were somewhat muddled, Subaru struggled to recall the moments just before he lost consciousness.
Right. He'd been slashed open and nearly killed. By a woman's voice, he thought.
In the loot warehouse, he'd found a corpse, and then been attacked by the person who appeared to have killed that corpse's owner. And then, on the verge of death— "That's right! Satella!"
The silver-haired girl had been worried about Subaru and had ventured into the loot warehouse after him.
The memory of his own actions around that incident crashed back, and regret flooded Subaru's chest with full force.
Subaru had been told clearly—explicitly—by her.
Don't try to handle things on your own. If anything happens, call for her.
That instruction carried a weight beyond mere concern for his safety. It was, properly understood, a message meant to signal to Satella that he was in a critical situation.
And yet, Subaru hadn't even managed the basic task of calling out at that moment.
The result: he himself failed to escape the attacker, and he lured Satella into that scene of carnage.
In the darkness, drowning in a pool of his own blood, Subaru had watched helplessly as the silver-haired girl was cut down by the attacker.
She had collapsed into that sea of blood just the same, going still before Subaru had, and— "Wasn't I supposed to... be looking after Satella?"
He remembered
They had not been said lightly. It wasn't that Subaru hadn't taken them seriously—it was exactly as the little cat had feared. That danger had been waiting for both of them.
And despite repeated warnings, Subaru had let that chance slip through his fingers through nothing more than carelessness.
That was why he was here now.
Thrown out onto the street in a state of total bewilderment, unsure of the safety of people he knew, having lost even his sense of direction, utterly adrift.
"I'm an idiot... No, I really am an idiot. No time to stand around with my head hanging. I've got to find Satella and Puck—"
Both of them might be dead—Subaru shook that cruel thought from his head.
If even he, someone with absolutely nothing going for him—not a single redeeming quality, not an iota of usefulness, a machine that existed solely to produce waste—could survive, then there was no way those two were gone. The girl with the spell-casting ability, the good-natured busybody, the gorgeous beauty who was too stubborn for her own good yet somehow incredibly earnest—and the aloof, impossible-to-pin-down oddball of a spirit.
No. He refused to believe they were dead.
"For now, I should..."
—head back to the loot warehouse. That was Subaru's decision.
If that location was the endpoint of his consciousness, then the clue to his next move had to be there.
Once the idea struck, he moved immediately. This was where Subaru's trademark speed of decision-making shone. Back in his original world, it had been almost exclusively employed for giving up—like deciding not to go to school today. But now, in this moment, it carried real meaning as the power to sever hesitation without a second thought.
However, Subaru's headlong decision was— "Hey there, buddy. How about you hang out with us for a little while?"
—cut short by three men who had positioned themselves to block the alley.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * "Come on, come on, why the blank face?"
"Looks like he doesn't get it. Maybe we should explain it to him."
The men smirked, curling their lips in contempt as they watched Subaru show no reaction to their intimidation.
Subaru regarded them with the detached air of someone watching a hilariously bad stage performance.
There were three of them. Their appearance was, to put it charitably, not what one would call well-groomed. Their faces were the kind where every ounce of their crude upbringing and thuggish nature showed through with unmistakable clarity.
Airs of men accustomed to rough violence, with scars on their faces and skin, and an unmistakable atmosphere that said they considered force a perfectly valid answer to any question.
Every single thing about them triggered an inconvenient sense of déjà vu in Subaru. After all, they were— "You guys... did you, by any chance, hit your heads on something while I wasn't looking?"
Only a few hours ago, these same men had been the catalyst that led Subaru to meet Satella and Puck.
They were unquestionably background characters—mob-level NPCs at best. But since this otherworld was a three-dimensional place, there wouldn't be recycled character models. If someone suggested they were just three unrelated strangers who happened to look similar— "Three strangers who look exactly alike all teaming up as muggers? How likely is that?"
One lookalike, fine. But three, all with the same face, forming a party? That was a stretch. Which meant they were the same crew from his memory.
"Did you hit your heads, or are you already coming after me for revenge? Things don't change much between worlds, huh. At least you're being somewhat decent by not bringing an army."
In the real world, take out one guy and he'd show up later with friends for payback. Eventually, no matter how many you beat down, more and more enemies kept spawning until you were forced into an unwinnable fight against some absurdly overpowered foe—the classic game-over spiral.
Compared to that kind of chain reaction, these guys had the guts to come at him under their own power rather than through intermediaries. That at least deserved some grudging respect.
Either way, targeting him for revenge over what had happened was entirely the wrong call.
"Look, I get the impulse to pick on someone who looks weak, so I'm not saying you're wrong, per se. The timing's just really bad..."
"What's this guy saying? Is he nuts or something?"
The men jeered as Subaru calmly attempted to find a peaceful, negotiated resolution.
That attitude finally got under even Subaru's skin. His willingness to keep things civil was born entirely out of urgency—he was, by nature, an extremely short-tempered person.
Still, when he considered the gravity of the situation, a little contempt was something he could swallow— "Alright, buddy. For starters, put down everything you've got. That'll get you off the hook."
"Oh sure, yeah. Everything I've got. I'm in a hurry anyway, so let's just call it even. Really."
"And then act like a dog! Get down on all fours and bark 'Please help me!'"
"Gettin' a little carried away, don't you think—!!"
The sheer audacity of that final line was enough to snap the last of Subaru's patience.
His sudden explosion of fury caught the men off guard. While they froze, Subaru locked his sights on the second man from the front.
This was the one who'd previously fended off Subaru's attack with a knife. He'd certainly have the same short-circuited instinct to pull a blade in an instant. And so— "You're first! I hate people who don't value life! Die!"
A devastating palm strike cracked the man's jaw upward. Before he could recover, Subaru drove his left fist into his now-open torso and slammed him into the wall, taking him out in one clean combo.
The other two were still reacting to the suddenness of it all. Subaru swept the legs out from under one, sending him sprawling. With that opening secured, he took aim at the last man standing and hurled his entire body at the man's midsection.
In a perfect body-tackle, Subaru scooped the man up and launched both of them full-tilt into the wall. The impact wrung a groan from the man, and Subaru finished him with a vicious kick. When he turned around, the man he'd tripped was just getting to his feet.
"Guh... you little—"
"Alright. One-on-one. Your knife and your machete buddies are already down for the count, so what are you gonna do?"
Subaru's adrenaline-fueled bravado made the man's expression shift—some mixture of fear and uncertainty. This was the one who'd actually been knocked out cold by Satella's magic during the earlier commotion.
He was the only one Subaru hadn't confirmed for a weapon, but judging by the man's current reaction, he was clearly not carrying anything lethal.
"A straight fistfight? I'm not the type to drop to my knees begging for mercy anytime soon."
"You're laughin' at me, you little punk? Don't underestimate me, you brat!!"
The man spit out a challenge, and Subaru waved him off with a dismissive hand—the perfect provocation. The man took the bait and charged.
Subaru met him with a straight punch aimed squarely at the chest. Dead center—it landed clean. But the man's momentum carried him forward anyway, and he drove Subaru back toward the wall, trying to pin him.
"Way, way too easy!"
Subaru grabbed both of the man's wrists where they gripped his shoulders and tore them off with raw strength that far exceeded the man's own.
The flicker of panic in the man's eyes was all Subaru needed. He twisted his expression into a savage grin.
"I'm a shut-in, but don't underestimate me. Every day without fail, I swung a wooden sword and trained for no good reason. My grip strength is over seventy kilos. I can bench press up to eighty."
At one particularly unfortunate homebody gathering, he'd crushed an apple in his fist and sucked every molecule of air out of the room.
Years of shut-in living where the only thing he'd never stopped doing was training his body. Against an opponent of roughly the same build, Subaru had the baseline physical fitness to hold his own in almost any contest of strength.
The man screamed as his wrists were crushed in that viselike grip. The instant his hold loosened, Subaru's knee drove into him. The thug folded in half with a pained grunt, and Subaru swiftly circled behind him.
"Don't blame me if it hurts. I always wanted to try this—an on-the-ground backdrop!"
He wrapped his arms around the man's waist and hurled him backward with everything he had.
It was close to a pro wrestling back drop, except for the part where he let go midway—a viciously dirty move. The man's head collided with the wall with a sickening crack, and he crumpled to the ground, not moving a muscle.
Confirming that both other men were silent, Subaru went back to the knife-wielding one he'd taken out first.
The knife man, who'd taken comparatively less damage, was groaning in agony, but at Subaru's approach he reflexively reached for the blade tucked in his coat. Tried to reach for it, anyway—Subaru mercilessly planted a kick in his face. He went out cold.
"Easy... Easy win! Evil never triumphs in this world!"
Natsuki Subaru pumped his fist in a victory pose and celebrated alone in the middle of the street.
Years of pointless daily training turned out to not be completely useless after all. What a relief. In any case— "Still, nothing about my situation has actually changed. I've got to get to that loot warehouse, distractions aside."
After confirming that none of the three men were dead, Subaru hurried out of the alley.
When he emerged onto the main street unscathed, he caught a few surprised murmurs of "Oh" from passersby—which bothered him more than he'd have liked. He desperately wanted to shout at anyone who'd witnessed the mugging attempt: "You should've called for help, you know!"
Of course, Subaru—cursed with crippling social anxiety—wasn't about to do anything of the sort, and he fled the scene at a brisk jog instead.